(This is the seventh and final sermon in our Advent and Christmas series, "Let Us Build a House", based on the Advent theme from A Sanctified Art. The others can be found here, here, here, and here - the third and sixth were given by a guest preacher.)
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Since late November, we’ve been figuring out how to build the home that God calls us to build—God’s kin(g)dom—both for ourselves and for the world. On Christmas Eve, we heard the good news that God has come to dwell with us even though the home we’re building together still isn’t finished. We were challenged to welcome all that Christ is into our hearts (even the parts that make us uncomfortable) because God knows better than we do what it will take to see this project through to completion. We have the blueprints, and the architect has arrived to help us finish construction; the kin(g)dom is imminent. But as we enter a new calendar year with yet another wave of COVID making headlines, national unity still feeling impossibly out of reach, and so many unknowns ahead of us, we may start to wonder if maybe God has changed the plan on us.